Elijah Wood must be best known for his starring role in The Lord of the Rings trilogy, and less so for some of his darker work (Sin City, Eternal Sunshine, and my personal favorite alien-takeover teen-angst movie, The Faculty). His work in FX'sWilfred rounds it all out, proving that he's an artist capable of a wide range of roles, in pieces of any tone. Recently, experimental electronic/hip-hop artist Flying Lotus released a music video for his new album Until the Quiet Comes featuring a special effects-amputated Mr. Wood -- as well as a found-item prosthetic arm that engenders itself around him. Read on to check out the video as well as an effects breakdown posted by director David Lewandowski.

Flying Lotus has carved out an impressive canon of acclaim for himself (not to mention made consistently awesome and interesting music), Until the Quiet Comesfollows suit with almost universal praise. If you're interested in forward-looking but personal, emotive, and unobtrusive electronic music, I recommend you give a few FlyLo discs a purchase. Now, with thanks to The Creators Project for the find, we present you the music video for "Tiny Tortures."

And here's the great Process Montage, which details the several methods used to accomplish the re-arming effects done unto Elijah -- plus the creation of the swirling world of painted particle-light he enters -- courtesy director David Lewandowski, from his website and Vimeo page:

The realm of music videos is often a hot-bed for unique visual play, and in the past has provided a fertile testing-ground for techniques that, in some cases, would be furthered and immortalized in blockbuster films. The loose nature of the form means pretty much anything goes, and thusly strange journeys and bizarre worlds can readily be explored in them -- perhaps moreso than what the imagery of a film (or even a short) could justify given its story or even the form itself. I love stuff like this, because it un-grounds us -- just enough -- from reality, at least for the short while that we're watching. Pure lucid imagination takes hold -- and we forget for a moment things like the need for beats in the writing, the realism that gravitates around suspension-of-disbelief, or the inevitable fear that what's going on just isn't clear enough. Given the proliferation of inexpensive (and easy-to-use or learn) visual effects technologies, I think we'll only be seeing more stuff like this from the independent talents that be. I, for one, am pleased about this.

What do you guys think of the music video? Do things like motion capture open up creative possibilities in your brainstorming? What have visual effects allowed you do artistically that may have been impossible several years ago?

Links:

[via The Creators Project]

musicvideowatchvisualeffectsvfxpracticaleffectsflyinglotusflyloelijahwood
Editing & Post-ProductionMovies & TV